Meta-Cthulhuing

So a more generalised look at my feelings about Trail of Cthulhu.

I've been asked about what the transition is like as a long-term CoC GM to the new system and it's been interesting. The big selling point used by Robin Laws has been the whole don't roll for a clue thing which has caused quite a furore in places like rpg.net where peeps have said that a good GM does that anyway. To be fair I've dabbled with that in the past but it's nice having a system built around the idea and the cries of good GM's don't do that are a little over the top. Check out the audio games at Yog these guys are goods and experienced and the issue still comes up. Don't check them out for just that though they're loads of fun. In the end the clue system brings about other things which I find much more interesting.

For quite a while I've been wanting to talk about how the Gumshoe rules change the shape of the game. Different things become prioritised which changes how a session plays out. I've been struggling to find a way to describe this then Robin once again shows what a smart bastard he is by saying most of what I wanted to say. There's an inherent shape, or structure, to a Gumshoe game that can't help but come out during play. I sort of wish I'd run a pre-written scenario beforehand but it wouldn't be the same as finding the shape as a group. I'm sticking to using the word shape, structure works if you're writing the scenario beforehand but shape is what something like the Armitage Files creates.

As an introductory game ToC falls well behind CoC. CoC is just incredibly intuitive, everybody knows what a percentile is. ToC was pretty hard to describe and we're still sorting the game out in our heads. To be fair though our least experienced player is really getting there and the whole spend thing is working as a dramatic device. Shape comes back again.

Leaving the weirdest to last. Whilst stuck in an airport last month I decided to poke around the stats part of the blog, something you normally avoid doing because you don't want to find out that your granny is the only person who ever looks. Checking through I found that out of my two hits, my granny does good, I had one from Pelgrane Press. Bored and full of Dutch beer I went on to discover this.

I'm not sure how to feel. It's nice to get attention an a'that but what if they actually read the blog? I'm not intriguing at all, through my life I've mostly been described as vaguely annoying and rude. When Simon realises how badly I've mangled their baby he'll get Ken Hite to be ironic at me and Robin Laws will come around and beat me up. I don't know why but I've always thought that if I was going to get my head kicked in by a games designer it would be that Laws bloke. It's all a worry.